


No Time to Party

by Zaniida



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: COVID-19 (Coronavirus), Concerns, Gen, Logan Pierce doesn't take risk all that seriously, risk management, social distancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23277043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaniida/pseuds/Zaniida
Summary: So it struck me that if Logan Pierce in hiding over a threat to his life still managed to call in a couple hundred friends of unknown trustworthiness, that he'd probably be a bit less than cautious with the quarantine procedures.And then I wondered what the Machine might think of his antics....
Relationships: Joseph "Joey" Durban & Logan Pierce & Harper Rose
Comments: 9
Kudos: 13





	No Time to Party

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for any failures of character/voices; I'm not that familiar with Joey or Harper, and I put this together pretty fast and with only one quick beta pass. Hope it reads okay.
> 
> Stay tuned for the End Note for more info on Coronavirus preparedness!

Frowning, Logan sprawled out on the park bench and fiddled with his phone. “This is ridiculous!” he declared. “Yet another dead end. Is it too early to conclude that there’s something wrong with the Machine? I swear we’re chasing after a person who doesn’t even _exist_.”

“Didn’t you say that about Mr. Finch?” Joey asked as he distributed their various caffeinated concoctions.

“What I _said_ was, it’s fascinating to find someone with no digital footprint. Practically unheard-of. But finding Harold was like trying to study dark matter, by looking for patterns in the missing data. Ms. Vidal doesn’t even have _that_ much -- just that one little entry I found that brought us here, and then… nothing.”

“Well,” Harper said, leaning back and uncapping her chai, “we’d only get her number if she were under serious threat. So it’s reasonable for her to be in hiding.”

“Nobody hides _this_ effectively,” Logan groused. “Or if they did, we wouldn’t be the team called in to deal with it.” He chucked his phone onto the picnic table in disgust. “I got into this thing to save lives, not to wander around the boonies tracking down ghosts.”

“Look, if it weren’t serious, the Machine wouldn’t keep sending us back here. It’s usually pretty good at redirecting us if we’re really off on the wrong foot. But every time we try to leave the county, we get the same number, so obviously it wants us here.”

“Maybe we need to think about other possibilities,” Joey mused. “If the number led us here, but it’s not really a person, then maybe the Machine is trying to tell us something that it can’t tell us directly.”

Harper frowned. “Like what?”

“Maybe we’re supposed to be looking for something that isn’t a person?”

“Again, like what?”

Drumming his fingers on the table, Logan let out a wordless sound of irritation. “Okay, so the Machine, what, somehow managed to invent a person who doesn’t exist in order to get us out here to the middle of nowhere, where we’ve spent three days running around investigating derelict buildings and buying coffee. And the only person we’ve even _spoken_ with is that barista boy we keep coming back to.”

“Did you _expect_ to see a lot of people? Hamilton County is quiet to begin with, and everybody’s staying indoors thanks to the Coronavirus.”

“Ugh, I _know_ ,” Logan groused. “It’s driving me _nuts_.”

“How so?” Joey asked. “You’re a tech guy, you should be in your element when everything moves online.”

“Did you miss the part where I’m a people person? I can’t stand being cut off from humanity this way. I need _human contact_ , you know?”

Harper shot him a grin. “Extrovert, huh? Guess you’ll have to learn to survive, and hope it’s all over by the time summer rolls around.”

“Are you kidding? Everybody’s stuck at home and itching for a way to blow off some steam. This weekend’s party is gonna be the _bomb_.”

Both teammates stared at him. “Excuse me?” Harper asked. “Party?”

“Hey, you’re invited too! I wouldn’t leave out any of my besties. Joey, you can bring Pia, and I hope you don’t mind if I buy you a decent suit--”

“Logan, are you serious right now?” Joey shook his head in disbelief. “I know you keep track of the news. People all over the world are dying from this thing, the governor shut down all major gatherings, and you’re _still_ planning to throw one of your giant parties?”

A confused shrug. “Yeah, why not? In a crisis like this, people need a little extra morale.”

“And you’re not at all concerned about spreading Coronavirus to all of your friends?” Harper asked incredulously.

“C’mon, anyone who’s that sick will just stay home.” Logan shot them a grin, but his teammates just shared a worried glance.

“You can spread Coronavirus before you even know you _have_ it,” Joey said. “Before you get any symptoms.”

“So what if a few people catch it?” Logan countered. “It’s just like the flu. The flu kills thousands of people each year, but you don’t see people panicking like this over the flu.”

Harper shook her head. “It’s both more infectious and more deadly than the flu; cases have been growing exponentially. All it takes is one carrier, and your party becomes a contagion vector, spreading this thing out in all directions. You really want to infect dozens of people at one event, have them take it home to their families? How many of them have loved ones at risk of complications? Sure, most of the cases are mild, but that's still a _ton_ of people who get hit a lot worse. And it looks like the people who get a bad case and recover from it may still have long-term damage to their lungs.”

“Have you even checked on the situation in Italy?” Joey asked. “Their hospitals are overrun. There’s not enough beds and doctors to take care of everyone who needs it; how do you think the United States is going to fare? We're in the early stages now -- a few weeks or months from now, it's gonna look a lot worse.”

“Yeah,” Harper said. “Logan, you know full well how big and interconnected our human relationships are. Do you want to be responsible for a lot of your friends losing the people they care about? And all because you can’t bear to stay home and be a little bored for a few weeks?”

“All right, all right!” Logan cried. “Fine! Party canceled!”

“You’re not just saying that?”

Rolling his eyes, Logan sighed. “Tell you what, I’ll turn this weekend into some sort of new technology to make this whole mess more bearable. I’ll, um…” Suddenly, he grinned. “I’ll figure out a better way for one friend to stream a movie or game footage for the others to watch online. Movie nights from the privacy of your quarantine!”

“I thought they already had something like that?” Joey asked

“One of my friends tried to make a movie night that way,” Harper said. “Took her half an hour to get it to work, and then we had to put up with a lot of echoes any time someone made a comment.”

“Exactly. I’m sure I can do better. I’m gonna channel my annoyance into making yet another awesome technology to better the world.”

“Instead of inadvertently killing people,” Harper said, nodding. “I like it.”

“Guys…” Joey said slowly. “Do you think the Machine predicted that Logan was going to throw a party?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Harper said after a moment’s thought. “He’s kinda predictable.”

“Hey!”

“Anyway, shall we get back on the hunt for Ms. Vidal?”

“Wait a minute,” Logan said. “‘Corrie Vidal’? Oh, god _dammit!_ ”

“Huh?”

“CO VID,” he grumped, and tossed his half-full latte across the table into the garbage can. “We’ve been had.”

After a moment, Harper barked out a laugh. “A person who never existed. What’s that you said about dark matter? Looking for patterns in the missing data.”

“So we _were_ sent here to save lives,” Joey said. “Not by stopping a killer, but by disrupting your party plans.”

Logan glared at him, but Joey just clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, the three of us already share a contamination vector; if one of us is sick, the rest are gonna get it anyway. I assume your place is set up for a movie night?”

“Yeah,” Harper said. “And this way we can keep you reminded of how much you don’t want to kill your friends.”

“All right,” Logan said, and finally grinned again. “At least I’m not entirely alone.”

“And hey,” Harper added, “neither of us is trying to kill you! I understand that’s an improvement over your previous giant group of supposed friends.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Logan groused. “Anyone else in the mood for a bad movie? I could scrounge up a proper zombie apocalypse.”

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote these sorta mini-PSAs -- this one for my POI fans, and another for my MCU fans -- in the hopes that they'd make certain info more memorable and help people stay safe and healthy during this trying time. You can go read my MCU fic [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23198275); it's basically Pepper Potts chiding Tony over all the many ways that he's not taking care of his health, and securing from him a promise that he'll do better (at least for a while).
> 
> That's basically what I did: I asked myself which character in the fandom would be most impacted by a key part of the Coronavirus pandemic. In the MCU, it's pretty obviously Tony, as far as risk factors (he's likely to catch it despite his best efforts, and his health sucks so he's likely to develop complications). In POI, I considered that Harold is somewhat older and a bit infirm to begin with, and John's out in the field at high risk of catching it, so they'd likely end up in separate quarantines and probably be bothered by the separation. Heck, maybe Finch'd end up with Shaw or Root hanging out with him in quarantine and just bugging him XD
> 
> But as I considered the other characters, it struck me that Logan was _by far_ the one most likely to cause large-scale problems with the pandemic. And that the Machine would predict this... and take steps to stop him. Even if that means baiting him out to the least populous county in New York for a few days until his friends get a chance to drum some sense into him.
> 
> So there you have it: Why this fic exists ^_^
> 
> Stay safe and healthy, all you wonderful people! (And the not-so-wonderful ones as well.) And if you'd like some Coronavirus-specific writing prompts to help channel anxiety into something productive, let me know!


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